Wake Up Your Email List – 10 Ways to Create a Pattern Break

Wake Up Your Email List – 10 Ways to Create a Pattern Break

Good marketers know what their contacts respond to and when. They design an email schedule that delivers what their contacts expect, at the time and day they are most likely to respond to it.

But that consistency has a downside. Your list can fall asleep after a while. They may assume they know what you’re sending or when you’re going to offer a sale and feel they don’t need to open the email.

Every once in a while, you should shake things up. Send an email that doesn’t follow suit. The change can be very subtle or bold. 

Changes in an email program like this are pattern breaks. They are a change to a single email, to wake up your list by doing something unexpected. They are meant to give your contacts a moment of pause to wonder what you’ve sent and engage with the email.

Now, after the heavy holiday email period, is a good time to insert a pattern break. Plan them into your 2018 schedule as well.

Below are 10 ideas for pattern breaks. The first five are reflected in the inbox before the email is opened, and the next 5 are within the email body.

10 Ways to Create a Pattern Break in Your Email Program

Affecting Open Rates:

  1. Send on a different day of the week.
  2. Send at a different time of day.
  3. Try something out of the norm for you in a subject line. Examples might be using an emoji, brackets, or humor.
  4. Send the email from a different individual in your company, perhaps even the President.
  5. Personalize the subject line with the contact’s first name dynamically populated.

Affecting Click Through:

  1. Include animation.
  2. Do a text only email, as if it was written from someone’s personal account.
  3. Send a survey to elicit a response.
  4. Use humor or a different writing style than you normally use in your message.
  5. Try an entirely different layout for your email template.